Nothing Doubting

So many of my spiritual experiences happen around water. Many of them while I'm soaking in my bathtub, reading or thinking. I don't know why that is, but maybe it's because water is such a good conductor of energy.

Anyway, eleven years ago I was relaxing in my bath when, out of the blue, a voice in my head spoke to me saying, you are going to have another baby and it's going to be a boy. I remember going still, frozen in amazement, wondering if it was true, but it was so clear that I had a hard time doubting it. My first reaction after that was, "Please don't send another boy. I really want a girl." I had 3 boys already and one daughter. (And those boys were high maintenance!)

But the message was so clear and even though my husband moaned and groaned about it, he acquiesced. My pregnancies are long and difficult. Filled with fatigue and throwing up on a daily basis, so he was not ecstatic. We got rid of our birth control and let ourselves get pregnant. Truth be told, I was very excited for another child, because I'd felt we weren't through for whatever reason.

I got pregnant right away and found a midwife I liked. At my two, or maybe three month appointment, my midwife couldn't find a heartbeat. She sent me to a regular OB who also couldn't find a heartbeat, but I was still testing positive for pregnancy. It was a scary moment, to not be able to find a heartbeat or even see the baby on ultrasound! The OB thought I was probably having a tubal pregnancy, which needed to be corrected right away. Otherwise the baby would burst the fallopian tube, which can cause death.

I was immediately scheduled for surgery. Come to find out, I was having a molar pregnancy. I'd never even heard of that, but what it basically is, is an egg becomes fertilized, implants in the uterus, and then for whatever reason, doesn't grow, but the placenta keeps growing because it thinks there's a baby there. It's craziness!

When I woke up and was told all of this, I was broken-hearted. I had been so excited about having another child. I couldn't believe I'd been so off in my understanding of the message. I began to doubt myself because of all I had been through, and wondered if I was making spiritual experiences up, if it was just all in my head and I was schizophrenic or something. I cried for a long time, but kept moving forward with a shred of faith that everything would work out and that for some reason, it was meant to be this way.

I think it was in June, three months later, that I got a phone call from DCFS. They asked me if I wanted to take Emily's (not real name) new baby. New baby? Her baby was a year old and her family had him as far as I knew. The gal on the phone said, no, she'd just had another baby that was 3 months premature, was in the McKay Dee NICU, and needed a mother to come in every day to hold and feed him. Emily had given birth and then two days later had gone to jail for breaking her probation (meth and other drugs). They were asking me since we'd adopted Emily's other baby (her 3rd one) who was three at the time. All in all, Emily had 6 kids, all of them taken away and adopted out. I would have taken them all, but we only got two.

At that moment, my heart was pierced to the core! The voice I'd heard in the bathtub said, "THIS is your baby boy!" I didn't even call my husband to ask how he felt about it. I screamed, YES! into the phone. Yes! Yes! Yes!

I went to that hospital every day to hold and feed him. The nurses had a hard time getting him to eat the amount he needed in the time allotted, but for me, he would! It was a miracle really. He was a very slow eater and not growing rapidly until I started coming. (He'd been in the NICU almost a month before they'd called me!)

That baby felt like a reward to me, like the Lord was giving me a gift for some of the extremely difficult things I had been going through. And considering that our little Wyatt been born so early, there was NOTHING wrong with him. He has a slight lazy eye, but that really is it, unless you count that he has some ADHD issues now that he's 10. I adore him as though I'd given birth to him myself. I feel undeniably connected to him, which has been the struggle I have had with his older, half-brother who had also been born premature, who when we got him, had RAD (reactive-attachment disorder), did not like to be held or cuddled, and now has some difficult issues he (and we) deal with. That's a post for another time, but Wyatt is a gift not only for us, but for his brother who struggles so much. They're best friends now, even though they fight like cats and dogs half the time.

This experience has taught me a few things. One, that God operates on his own time-table, and we need to be patient and understand that whatever He has promised will come to pass... someday. Two, that messages don't always come in their entirety, and maybe that happens to make us trust more, which leads to three, that we need to trust Him. Nothing doubting.